Bleak Midwinter
by patchworkdove
Summary: Another kink meme challenge; A harsh winter has Walter fall seriously ill, but Daniel is there to provide his chicken-soup personality to the situation.
1. Now is the winter of our discontent

Request:

So let me have some feverish hurt/comfort. Maybe it's Rorschach, and Dan has to drag him off the street and put him to bed. Maybe Ror shows up for a night of patrol and finds Dan sweaty and shivering. Whichever, I want chicken soup for the slashy soul. Please oblige me, kind anon.

Delivery:

It was a freak winter, winds sweeping in from the frozen north with howling gales and savage blizzards. New York was being inundated with nightly drifts of fresh snow dumped successively upon one-another. For the first few days the scurrying of people going about their filthy lives had chewed the fresh white blankets apart like rats in a linen closet, clearing their runs and leaving the dirty, brown slush to accumulate in gutters and drains. However, little by little the snow became more resistant to the jostling of humanity and gradually the unstoppable force of raw, natural power took the upper hand. Many alleyways had become impassable, clogged with walls of brittle ice that wrapped around buildings, strained roofs and burst water pipes.

Walter had no money to spare for heating. He had battled through the blizzards to the Garment District every morning until his workplace closed due to the disruption, lack of custom and the laziness of his co-workers, leaving him marooned in the damp, frigid hollow of his rented cesspit. Rorschach's nightly forays into the bitter night had yielded him nothing except a wet uniform that he couldn't get dry.

It stacked up. The rotting, loose window frame that let through a rattling draft. The cold, bare floor. His thin, lumpy mattress, compressed and hardened with age. His few, tattered blankets. No heating. Barely any food at all, let alone anything warm. His reckless efforts to continue patrolling. It amounted to something beyond the capacity of his weak, human flesh. It was getting the better of him.

Every scrap of dry fabric Walter owned, plus some carpet off-cuts and the more liberal newspapers of his collection had been incorporated into a rat's nest pile on his bed. Buried at the centre of it, wheezing unsteadily, was the wasting, shivering husk of the Terror of the Underworld. He felt sure that this was serious, that he was very sick, even though he was struggling to think coherently. It should have been frightening; being rendered so utterly incapable of anything more than sweating and shivering in a dazed, feverish heap, but it didn't. His survival instincts seemed to have deserted him along with his strength. He could grasp that this was important, and that this could possibly kill him, but it had snuck up on him so slowly and gradually that it was hard to establish a sense of urgency.

Despite the frayed and woolly strings of thought tangled in his head, the discomfort of his flesh was very stark and real. The chest pains were the worst; each breath hurt like his lungs were full of fish-hooks, snaring and pulling at his tender inner workings with each delicate inhalation. Although the rough, grating pain in his joints was equally harsh, that could be lessened to a distant, dull ache if he just lay very still. It hurt less if he just carried on laying there, dedicating himself to taking short, shallow little breaths and not moving. It hurt less, but some corner of his mind refused to let go of a glimmer of what felt like truth; if he just lay here hiding from the pain, death would claim him.

He had spent his entire life dodging the threat of becoming a statistic. How many children died every year through neglect and violence from their parents? Walter could remember his young life, lived like a cockroach going to ground by day and venturing out silently in the dead of night to pick through her leftovers. Cowering and hiding when she came to dig him out, levering him from his pit for her own sick amusement and need for attention. How many orphans with violent track records made it anywhere in the world, fighting enemies at every corner with no-one at their back?

A gentle, warm feeling unlike the feverish flash-fires of sickness touched him at that thought. He wasn't completely alone any more, not since he had found a partner in Nite Owl. There was deep, honest trust there, of the kind Walter had only encountered in books and previously regarded as purely fictional. It had taken years to evolve to its current status, but after hundreds of nights spent fighting side-by-side, guarding each-others backs, he had begun to accept it. It was hard to swallow, he had never felt so... so... he had never trusted anyone like this in his life. Nobody else had ever made such an effort with him. Indifference of him or against him yes, but Daniel worked with him in a way that struck Walter to the core. They saved one another from serious injury, pooled their resources, collaborated... became something that was greater than the sum of its parts.

The more he thought about Daniel and his friendly hand-shakes, comfortable company, honest brown eyes, warm smiles, generous offerings of coffee and sugar-cubes, the harder it became to think about anything else. Daniel had broken men's arms and legs to keep them from landing blows on him. His partner was a kind, forgiving man, who would forgo his soft, liberal sentimentalities to the point of snapping bones to save Walter's hide.

Daniel would help him, he was sure of it. Out of pity, the need to prove charitability or pure, plain empathy, he didn't know, but Daniel would help him. He would help him without question or hesitation. If he dragged his ailing carcass through the snow and up the steps to the well-kept, freshly painted door of Daniel's clean brownstone, he wouldn't even have to beg. There would just be concerned lines in his partner's forehead, worried words and hot, sugary coffee. Soft, gentle, lenient Daniel would welcome him with proverbial open arms.

It was painful to accept that Daniel was so addicted to leaving himself wide-open to attack. If anyone ever discovered the identity of the gentle man beneath Nite Owl's tough armour, Daniel would be slaughtered effortlessly. It had horrified Rorschach that night when his partner had removed his goggles and pushed back his cowl, introduced himself and offered a firm hand. Daniel willingly disclosed his identity, imparting information regardless of the fact that nobody can be trusted under torture. That Rorschach already knew Nite Owl's identity was only proof of how poorly Daniel concealed himself behind his cheap locks and flimsy defences.

It was pointless even considering it. In his current state he was only a liability. He couldn't run along rooftops or slip unseen through alleyways because of the sickness and the snow. If he tried to cross the distance to Daniel's house in his mask on the streets, any cop or one of hundreds of thugs with axes to grind would be able to catch him and kill him. If his identity was compromised, he would lead any observer right to Daniel's door. The distance was too great and he was far too weak.

Unless he took the sewerage system. Two blocks down there was an access hatch that was probably clear from snow, and there was a maintenance tunnel that crossed over from that line to the system which could be used to access the disused subway tunnel and thus, the Owl's Nest. There were a lot of ladders to be negotiated on that route, but at least it was dark, sheltered and probably warmer than the streets.

Walter shouldered himself up onto his hands and knees when the deeper breath he took during the move snagged in his chest. He coughed and hacked up thick, slimy clots of putrid phlegm and his lungs bubbled and wheezed. His joints creaked and his muscles burned. The distance to his front door seemed far, and Daniel's house was an eternity away, but he was going to try. He was already dressed in as many of his clothes as he could layer on top of one another, and after fumbling with his shoes he set about gathering the things he couldn't leave behind. His mask, the journal, the grappling gun, the few crumpled notes that summed up his entire fortune. They were the things that if left behind, would be stolen before long. He tucked them into the inner pockets of his trench, pulled the silk scarf tighter and higher and set his damp fedora on his head. He stopped for a rest before he opened the door to catch his breath, waiting for the pain and the dizziness to subside.

He stepped out, shaky and weak, but gripped with a single-minded determination to find Daniel.


	2. Made glorious summer by this sun of York

Daniel was in a decidedly good mood. The snow meant a break from patrolling, and he was free to spend his evenings mulling over newspaper reports instead or slipping in a few Avian-related articles for pleasure. He had spent the day holed up in his house, listening to the comparative quietness of the city and the whistling of the cold, dry wind. It was always satisfying to sit snug and warm at home in bad weather, or to lay curled up in bed when rain lashed against the window pane, protected from the elements. It made him feel more than just content, but grateful. Monotonous daily life often made light of significant things, but his warm house and stocked cupboards were a luxury the songbirds outside didn't have.

He wriggled his toes in his slippers and turned the page. He was thinking about how he might visit the local park to feed the birds tomorrow, when he decided he was a bit peckish himself. He set his magazine aside, gathered up his empty mug and traipsed through to the kitchen, considering how many young red-tailed hawks might be overwintering in Central Park this year. He'd spent many afternoons watching the resident pairs hunting and raising their young, but it was always nice to see a few fresh faces.

As he stepped into the kitchen his senses were assaulted by something like the stench of raw sewage. Once upon a time, that eye-stinging, nasal-hair-singeing smell might have made him wretch, but he had grown used to it after following Rorschach down rancid underground tunnels during their midnight escapades. He sniffed around the bin and the plughole, but the stink seemed strongest near the door to the basement. His broad shoulders slumped inside his thick sweater. The cold had probably popped a pipe somewhere down there, and it was probably disgorging its horrible contents all over the Owl's Nest. It looked like he'd be spending tomorrow at home after all, mopping up faeces or God-alone-knows-what instead of taking his binoculars and a flask of coffee down the park. He sighed, swapped his soft slippers for something more waterproof and wipe-clean, and went to assess the damage.

As soon as he'd unclicked the latch on the door it burst open, and a dark heap spilled onto his kitchen floor. He jumped back, all swift reflexes that had nothing to do with being an ornithologist, and realised that the limp heap was human. A really sickly-looking man with deathly-pale skin who was barely breathing... and oh shit. Even though the stranger was doused in raw effluence, Dan recognised some of the clothes. The pale silk scarf and patches of purple pinstripe poking out from beneath wadded layers were what caught his eye. "Rorschach?" He ventured, crouching down to touch what might be his ever enigmatic partner's face before he gained the presence of mind to check for a pulse. The rough skin of Rorschach's unshaven neck was far too cool to the touch and the sluggish throb of his pulse matched his noisy, laboured breaths.

Dan was inundated by the unbidden memory of the young girl who had lived next door to him when he was a child. Her cat had gone missing and she had been utterly distraught, completely inconsolable despite the money her wealthy father threw at the problem. The cat turned up a few days later dead on her doorstep. It had been hit by a car but it crawled home to die.

He forced the unhelpful thought from his head. Rorschach was cold and was wearing wet clothes. They needed to come off, but that only raised the question of what exactly his obsessively private partner would do to him when he regained consciousness. Dan had only been permitted the briefest glimpses of Rorschach's chin, wrists and injuries before. Just enough to confirm that his partner was human flesh and blood, even if his methods were severely inhumane. It was the first time Dan had even seen his face in its entirety and the next few minutes were filled with the frightening necessity of removing those wet clothes.

Dan raked his fingers through his hair, chastising himself for dithering about this, and set about peeling the sodden layers apart. Rorschach always wore a lot of clothes, even on stifling summer nights, but right now he was wrapped up like Tutankhamen's corpse. Dan wrestled with his limp body, unwinding the scarf from his neck, removing the shoes and darned socks, struggling to drag two pairs of trousers free from his legs without pulling the worn, greying underwear away. The layers kept coming and coming, and Rorschach kept getting smaller and smaller. He was hidden away like a Russian doll, and by the time Dan had dug down to the centre, he was struck by how tiny Rorschach was.

The things Daniel had seen his partner do did not correlate with the little body sprawled on his kitchen floor, so covered in raw scars it looked like the world had chewed him up and spat him out. He'd seen his partner do terrible, powerful things that made hulking, thugs-of-men piss themselves in fear. Dan had always acknowledged that Rorschach was shorter than him, but some primeval part of his instinctual reasoning took sum of what the man was capable of and added it on. Rorschach's indomitable nature and savage willpower made him seem so much bigger than he really was. Granted, him being unconscious would make him seem smaller but... Rorschach picked a punk up and hurled him into a dumpster a month ago. How was that even physically possible?

Dan gently scooped him up, one arm under the back of his knees and one behind his shoulders, careful to roll his head against his chest to stop it flopping backwards. He'd held a baby once, by its proud mother's insistence, who then took a paranoid turn and drummed the importance of supporting necks and heads in so deep it seemed to have permanently stuck.

Dan carried him upstairs with ease, careful not to catch his toes on the hand rail or door jambs. Despite the presence of a guest room and the sewer filth still clinging to Rorschach's skin, he put him in his own bed. There were at least two hot water bottles in the house somewhere and a small electric heater that would up the air temperature, so he set about fetching them.

As he filled the bottles with fresh, hot water he realized that he felt deeply guilty about seeing Rorschach unmasked and disrobed. His partner wouldn't appreciate the scrutiny, but he couldn't help the fact that he analysed everything he saw. The same part of his brain that could map the barring on an individual peregrine falcon's underwing to tell it apart from others had charted the man's features in an instant. His skin was heavily marked with tan freckles of varying shades over a very pale base colour, most densely on his cheekbones and arms from what he'd seen, although his back was probably covered too. He also had a bright reddish-orange shock of hair on his crown, so bright despite the grease and the grime in fact that if it had been anyone other than Rorschach, he'd have just presumed it was a dye job. As it were, it looked as though the guy had been born with built-in warning colours, ready for when he grew up and started breaking people's bones left right and centre.

Dan returned to the bedroom and pushed the hot water bottles under the covers, propping them up against Rorschach's chest. He looked at him again, still shocked about meeting Rorschach face-to-face, despite the circumstances. The feeling was likely to persist for a few days, or even weeks. The strange new face reminded him of the squabs from his youth, angular and odd coloured flesh tones under thin skin broken up by the bristly, coarse stubble, eyebrows and hair. The first time his pet pigeons had hatched out their eggs he'd been shocked by their appearance, with their lumpy bills, ungainly bodies and bruised eyes that managed to look both puffy and sunken.

Dan wondered what colour Rorschach's eyes were, hidden under stubby, ginger eyelashes and dark, sickly circles. People checked unconscious peoples' eyes all the time, didn't they? To check the pupils for concussion? Dan didn't suspect that to be what ailed Rorschach, but it was a good idea to check, wasn't it? Better to be safe than sorry. He reached out but lost his nerve at the last second, fingers frozen an inch away. He licked his lips, unsure of what he was afraid of. Rorschach would have woken up when he lifted him bodily off the kitchen floor, if he was going to be roused by anything. The pad of Dan's thumb came to rest lightly on Rorschach's eyelid, the softest part of that harsh face, and gently rolled the skin back. The pupil was wide, but slowly shrunk under exposure to light. Rorschach's eyes were a savage grey-blue.

Feeling more guilty about the numerous lines he'd crossed, Dan drew the curtains together and closed the door to keep the warmth of the electric heater in, grabbed a book to busy himself and settled on the other side of the bed.


	3. All the clouds that lourd upon our house

Rorschach slowly regained something approaching awareness of his surroundings, although it was an uncomfortable transition from painless unconsciousness into the aching horrors of reality. He was on his back and it felt wrong; he always slept curled on his side.

It wasn't the only thing amiss by far. His eyes, vision and focus swimming, were not looking at the familiar, creeping dark blooms of damp encroaching like spilled ink across the dingy, flaking ceiling of his apartment. Above him was an alien, flawlessly smooth expanse that would look institutional or clinical, except the lighting was too soft, subdued and warm. At least that meant he wasn't in a hospital.

His pulse was thundering unevenly in his ears, and modest movements were enough to throw off his sense of balance. Even laying flat on his back, he felt dizzy and nauseous, but he had to take stock of his environment. He needed to know where he was, even if his currently incapacitated state rendered him incapable of doing much about it.

Fortunately, it did not require astute detective skills. The wall beyond the foot of the bed proudly displayed a painting of a pair of owls. One perched, the other in flight, arranged in a contrived composition to show the plumage of the species at rest and in the air. An instructional illustration rather than superfluous artistic prettiness. It looked like it belonged in a bird watching handbook, or it was equally at home on Daniel Drieberg's bedroom wall.

The master bedroom no less. The one Daniel slept in. He was in Daniel's bed, and he wasn't alone.

Daniel was lying slumped next to him, thankfully on top of the covers and thankfully, fast asleep. He was drooling slightly where his chin had dropped onto his chest and left his mouth agape. He had drifted off whilst reading, if the copy of the Journal of Raptor Research tented askew on his torso was anything to go by. A less threatening image would be difficult to conjure; than that of a chronically short-sighted, socially-awkward grown man obsessed with birds of prey, snoring and drooling on himself under an issue of an obscure ornithological magazine, but Rorschach was horrified.

There was no layer of shifting latex between them. His face was missing. His idealistic armour was gone, leaving nothing but Walter's degenerated, empty skin. He couldn't remember how he got here, or conceive of any acceptable, realistic reason as to why he would climb almost-naked into bed next to Daniel. Rorschach was revolted by the sick, perverse wrongness of all this. Daniel would have seen him, must have seen him, unmasked and naked and exposed.

Escape. He had to get out, get away from this. He struggled against the covers that had been wrapped around him tight as a shroud, his joints protesting with gritty agony. He was so disgustingly weak, the air feeling thick as tar against his feeble limbs. Enraged by his total lack of control over the situation, he flung himself from the bed, but insult was added to injury as the room spun out from under him and he was unceremoniously pitched to the carpet.

There were exclamations in a familiar voice and hands on his shoulders as he tried to co-ordinate his body into getting up. The heat of flesh-on-flesh where Daniel's bare palms touched his unclothed back was repulsive, but there was no-where to recoil to. He lashed out with his last line of defence, biting down on the first thing his teeth touched. Soft flesh under thin cotton giving way. He answered the resulting shriek of surprise with his best attempt at a threatening growl; a sickly whine that shredded his dry throat and forced him to release Daniel as a coughing fit gripped him.

The coughing escalated into gagging, retching and finally culminated in him vomiting into a plastic bin offered by Daniel. There was precious little in his stomach to be brought up, but his muscles convulsed with relentless maliciousness until he divulged revolting green slime. Those stupid hands had returned to his shoulders, a sick contrast of one lending him support while the other lasciviously rubbed his back. He was too exhausted to fend Daniel off, and a silent stalemate developed as the heaving subsided.

Daniel broke it, soft-spoken as though addressing a child or fearing retribution, one of the two. Perhaps both. "All done?"

He nodded. A washcloth was offered and he wiped the bile and spit from his chin. Daniel wanted to help him back into bed, but he permitted only the slightest touches and barest hints of support.

Glaring proved to be a surprisingly effective deterrent. Daniel had never been afraid of the shifting black and white face that caused others so much discomfort, but he shied away from eye contact like a guilty man.

Looking away nervously, Daniel abandoned his efforts to prop Rorschach up with more pillows or tuck him in. Instead he fiddled with his glasses and started tidying things until the bin with the vomit in it was the last thing left. "I'm… I'll go and get rid of this. Will you stay there until I come back?"

Daniel risked meeting his gaze and Rorschach gave him a scowl for good measure.

-o-o-o-o-o-

With the sickly ex-stomach contents taken care of and the bin cleaned and rescued, Dan took his time plucking up the courage to return to his own bedroom. He rolled his pant leg up to examine the throbbing injury just above his knee; Rorschach's uneven teeth did nothing for the man's unused smile but they gave him a jaggedly effective bite. He probably had his partner's weakened state and the material of his pants to thank for the fact that the purple-ringed chunk of flesh wasn't bleeding and hadn't been torn free.

The haphazard ring was colouring up nicely already and was on track to becoming a particularly nasty bruise. As he procrastinated and continued probing the marks, he noticed a pronounced break in the circle; Rorschach seemed to be missing a tooth. Upper… left side… either the canine or a pre-molar? It was hard to tell, but it was an oddly personal detail.

He rolled the leg back down and traipsed to the kitchen. It still stank of sewage, and there was still a vaguely human-shaped outline of brown scum on the floor. He tip-toed round it, unwilling to clean it up right now but knowing that the longer it was left, the harder it was going to be to scrub away. He filled a tumbler with water and broke a pair of flu medicine pills from a blister pack before returning to his partner's bedside.

Rorschach nearly fixed him to the doorway with that brutal blue stare. The accusations in those eyes were so silently volatile Dan didn't know what to do with himself. Knowing and hateful, it was the kind of look most people shot at known sex offenders. He wasn't sure whether Rorschach felt that violated or if everybody garnered such disapproving looks from the uncompromising vigilante, but he did know that Rorschach tended to mutilate rapists. Dan knew he'd crossed a line. He'd not really had any other choice, but he'd still crossed a line. It wasn't that line though. He hadn't raped anyone.

He offered his best attempt at a warm smile, trying not to look too guilty or fearful, and held out his offerings. "You're going to get even more dehydrated now that you've been sick. Just… sip it gently, and when you feel up to it, these pills will help with the aches and pains."

Rorschach's lips lifted in a sneer. His upper left canine was missing. "Am sick enough." His voice was quiet and weak.

"What?"

"Am sick enough already."

"What do you mean…" Dan caught up. It was tap water. Familiar infuriation at his stubborn partner reared its head and the uncomfortable situation eased into something different. Not better, but more familiar territory. More manageable. He met Rorschach's foul expression with one of his own. "…this is about fluoride again, isn't it?"

"More poisonous than lead. Sick enough already."

"You need to drink something!"

"Will drink coke."

"Do you honestly think you could stomach cola right now? I'm not giving you coke, you'll just be sick again."

Rorschach glared at him, almost daring him to attempt to force tap water down his throat. "Will not drink poisoned water."

Dan sighed. "I've got double-distilled water for Archie's engine down in the basement. It's about as close to pure water as you can get. If I fetched you some, would you drink it?"

The stubborn ginger gave this some consideration. "You have access to pure water, but still drink tap water?"

"I'm not frightened of fluoride poisoning."

"Hn. Bravery close to stupidity."

"Will you drink double-distilled water or not?"

"Yes."

Dan put the pills down on the nightstand and turned to go. Trust Rorschach to want the most expensive water in the house.

"Do not take pills either, Daniel. Pharmaceutical companies interested in repeat custom, not consumer welfare."

Dan left the room, shaking his head.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Dan was beginning to suspect what the real reason his partner ranted about tap water was. Rorschach serially refused offers of tap water, but he drank coke. Where did he think the bottling plants got their water from? Dan wasn't sure, but he suspected it wasn't double-distilled, subjected to reverse osmosis or piped from natural springs. Hell, hadn't coca-cola contained traces of cocaine back at the turn of the century? Surely Rorschach knew that? How did it fit in with his stark black-and-white views on drugs, giant corporations and the chemical contents of tap water?

His contrary partner had accepted the expensive double-distilled water that had been meant for Archie. He had drank some, undoubtedly thirsty, and continued to sip it occasionally but he didn't seem to like it.

That was the real reason now, wasn't it? The man who repeatedly raided Dan's sugar supply had a sweet-tooth and a childlike taste in foods. Horrifically over-sweetened coffee, tins of beans that were both highly processed by large companies and loaded with flavourful salt, sugar and seasoning… Rorschach ate and drank like a man stuck in his childhood. A man who never grew up and started eating his greens because his mother told him they were good for him. A man who never started seeing the moral grey areas that came with growing up; learning that the world wasn't neatly sorted into Santa's naughty-and-nice list any more. Rorschach hadn't been taught to compromise, to fit in with the rest of society, and was stuck in an infantile, simplified high-contrast view of the world.

Rorschach didn't like plain water. Dan had a horrible suspicion that it wasn't because his partner was a spoilt brat who's whims had been humoured all his life. He ate like a madman raised by wolves, and Dan wondered, not for the first time, how close to the truth that statement might have been. Some of the things Dan had seen on his rounds as Nite Owl after they'd teamed up, after Rorschach started leading him into the impoverished, bitter bowls of the city, after Dan was introduced to his New York, had hammered home just how bad Rorschach's childhood probably had been. It was the cases the man gravitated towards; prostitution, human trafficking, child molesters, rapes and drug rings in the poor parts of the city that most people, and most masks, turned a blind eye to and wrote off as being beyond help.

At some point during his musings, he must have glanced over at the redhead hunkered under the covers on the other side of the bed, because now he was being stared down threateningly by a pair of blue eyes glaring out from under the scrunched-up blanket. Like a rattlesnake under a rock, only it was Rorschach's chest that was doing the deathly rattling in lieu of a scaly tail.

Dan obligingly turned away. "Would you like something to drink with a bit more flavour to it?"

Rorschach seemed to find it hard to admit to this, but eventually made an affirmative grunt, cunningly hidden amongst the rest of the sniffles and wheezes for deniability's sake.

Then Dan had an idea.

"I think I've got the ingredients for a traditional flu remedy lying around the house. It involves tea and lots of honey and sugar, and should help to make your breathing easier. What do you think?"

Rorschach poked his head out from beneath the shield of blanket. "Warm?"

"Yeah, it's basically a cup of tea with added extras. I'll go see if I've got the ingredients and whip one up for you if I can. Back in a second."

Daniel did have everything he needed and had gathered it together on the kitchen counter, still side-stepping the dirty outline on the floor. Tea bags, jar of honey, sugar cubes, even a small bottle of lemon juice and finally, a large bottle of single malt whiskey. Everything else entered the mug quickly, even the honey which he ladled in, but the whiskey… Dan hesitated before adding just a dash of it to the mix. He stirred it until the honey stopped sitting in a heap in the bottom. It smelled delicious, and he sipped it to see if the whiskey was noticeable. It wasn't, not over the severe sweetness that could have knocked his teeth clean out.

He made a second for himself with extra whiskey and took some extra sugar cubes upstairs with him, just in case Rorschach's wasn't quite sweet enough for his tastes.

Rorschach accepted the mug eagerly and sniffed it. He frowned. "What's in it?"

Dan settled back on his side of the bed, taking a sip of his own. "Tea, obviously, but its also got lemon juice in it, which is packed with vitamin C and is supposed to be really good for colds. Honey, which is good for soothing the throat and bees put all kinds of stuff in their honey to keep their larvae fit and well. Sugar too, mostly for sweetness."

Rorschach was still sniffing it. "Something else Daniel." He dipped his tongue in it warily, before recoiling. "Alcohol Daniel! Vice and corruption! Poisoned water, drugs and now alcohol?" The strange redhead was a picture of betrayal.

"Yes, yes, there is a tiny little bit of whiskey in it Rorschach, but it's medicinal. A lot of cough medicines have alcohol in them. It's supposed to help relax your muscles and dry some of the mucous from your airways, but I put so little in yours I doubt it's enough to really even give that much of an effect. It's certainly no-where near enough to get you tipsy, let alone drunk. Here, give mine a sniff, it's easily got three or four times as much whiskey in it as yours."

Rorschach was obviously sceptical, but after sniffing both mugs several times and a long internal debate decorated with many variations of the common scowl, he gave his own mug a proper taste and handed Dan's back.

"What is this called?"

"A hot toddy. It's pretty good when you're ill, and it's still just nice to have when the weather is foul. I think it came from Scotland originally, or something. Somewhere wet and cold where they have lots of whiskey."


End file.
